Singapore Executes a Dutch Engineer Arrested on Drug Charges

By PHILIP SHENON,

Published: September 24, 1994

SINGAPORE, Sept. 23—
A Dutch-born engineer was hanged here today on narcotics charges, the first Westerner to be executed under Singapore's draconian drug laws.

The Singapore authorities carried out the execution of the engineer, Johannes Van Damme, 59, despite appeals from Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands and from the Dutch Foreign Ministry, and despite reports linking Mr. Van Damme to the Dutch intelligence agency.

In a statement today, the Dutch Foreign Ministry said the Government was "greatly disappointed and appalled to learn of the execution."

The hanging, which took place at dawn at Changi prison, sent a chill through Singapore's large community of Western expatriates, many of whom were already alarmed by the recent caning of an American teen-ager and the arrest last month of an American businessman on assault charges.

Mr. Van Damme was arrested at Singapore airport in September 1991 after the police found 9.5 pounds of heroin hidden in his suitcase. He was taken into custody shortly after he arrived from Thailand, a major shipment point for narcotics, in transit to a flight to Athens.

Mr. Van Damme, a resident of Nigeria since 1976, said that he had been set up by a Nigerian criminal operation that he had exposed to the Dutch intelligence agency.

His assertion of innocence seemed to gain some credibility after the Dutch Foreign Ministry confirmed earlier this month that Mr. Van Damme had been in contact with the intelligence agency just before his arrest in Singapore. The exact nature of those contacts was not disclosed, however, and Dutch officials said they did not directly involve the drug charges in Singapore.

Mr. Van Damme, who was married to a Nigerian, said that he had been carrying the bag for a Nigerian engineer, and that he had not known what was inside. Nigerian drug operations reportedly control much of the heroin trafficking in Southeast Asia.

Singapore has executed scores of people, including many foreigners from other Asian countries, under a 1975 drug law that mandates capital punishment for possession of as little as a half an ounce of heroin.

Mr. Van Damme was the first Westerner to be executed under the law, and the timing of his execution alarmed some Westerners here who worry that the Singapore Government is on a vendetta against them.

Last May, an American teen-ager, Michael P. Fay, received four lashes with a bamboo cane after he confessed to charges of spray-painting cars. He later said he confessed under duress of nine days of police interrogation. Last month, an American businessman, Robert Freehill, was arrested for assault and abusive language, some of the charges dating to 1992. Mr. Freehill left Singapore after paying a fine.

In a statement from the Netherlands, Mr. Van Damme's family said they were "completely in the dark as to what actually happened and can only conclude that other people deliberately or unintentionally involved in this situation a man who was by nature guileless."

The family released a copy of the bluntly worded telegram that they received from Singapore prison officials last week: "Death sentence passed on Johannes Van Damme will be carried into effect on 23.9.94. Visit him on 20.9.94. Claim body on 23.9.94. Signed Superintendent, Changi Prison, Singapore."